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When there’s a bake sale or a potluck at work…I usually get way too excited and go all out. I love to bake…but I often cannot find enough people to eat my food…so when I KNOW there will be recipients/eaters. I go for it!! 🙂

This is one of the items I baked for our bake sale at work last month. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much feedback, but I did try one, and I can’t say I liked it a lot. I baked another flourless peanut butter cookie a while back, and I THINK that one was better. This one had a finer/smoother bite to it, but it flattened A LOT as it baked. The other one held its shape, but had more of a crumbly texture. You could also feel the crunch of the sugar as you chew it. I guess they each have their pros & cons, but I prefer the older one better.

There was a charity bake sale at work last week, and since I LOVE to bake, but can’t find enough people to eat the food, I LOVE bake sales (and potlucks)!! I took advantage of this and one of the things that I made are these PB&J Shortbread Bars. I first saw this on Tracey’s Culinary Adventures, and I thought they were perfect for a bake sale and perfect for testing out the pre-cut parchment paper from The Smart Baker (see post here).

To do the product testing in one go, I doubled this recipe and made a square version and a round version. The square version, I cut into 16 2×2 squares, and the round version, I cut into 12 wedges.

Directions:
1. Line a 9-inch round springform pan with parchment paper (I used some Pre-Cut Parchment by The Smart Baker, it works like a charm!…;))
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and peanut butter.
3. Add sugar & salt and beat until light & fluffy.
4. Add vanilla extract and stir to combine.
5. Add flour and beat until incorporated.
6. Remove 1/3 of the dough, form into a disk, wrap it with plastic wrap, and freeze for one hour.
7. Press remaining dough into an even layer at the bottom of the springform pan, spread the preserves evenly in the center of the dough (leaving an edge like a pizza crust), refrigerate.
8. When you’ve reached one hour of freezing the initial disk, preheat oven to 350F, break frozen dough into pieces and sprinkle on top of the preserves.
9. Bake for 40 minutes (or so) until shortbread is golden brown.
10. Cool completely before cutting with a pizza wheel (or knife).
Enjoy!!!

Portuguese Egg Custard Tart/Pastéis de Nata/葡式蛋撻I’ve been trying to make the perfect Portuguese Egg Custard Tart, but have yet to find the perfect combination between the egg filling and the tart dough. Today, I used this recipe. The egg filling was quite tasty, but the dough was a bit off. I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s not that it wasn’t flaky, because it was, but it wasn’t shortbread-y either. It was hard and chewy at the same time. Just off. The filling was pretty good though, I would’ve preferred it to be a little less sweet, so I’ll try 3/4 cup sugar next time. The filling of a Portuguese Egg Custard Tart is supposed to be burnt a little bit. The top layer should have random darkened circles, but mine came out canary yellow-ish. Not sure what happened there either. We really liked the filling though, now we may just need to alter it a bit, and find the perfect crust to go with it.

Hong Kong Style Egg Custard Tarts/港式撻皮蛋撻Since we’re on the topic of Egg Custard Tarts, I decided to post my creation of HK Style Egg Custard Tarts. I’ve tried a couple recipes, and I’ve combined the best egg filling with the best tart dough.

Instructions:Combine Tart ingredients together. Create 3/4 inch dough balls, and neatly spread out onto tart mold. You want the bottom to be as thin as possible (without holes) and the edge of the tart to be a little thicker. Combine Filling ingredients together. Fill tarts with filling about 3/4-7/8 full. Bake in 450 degree oven for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 250 degrees and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool (in molds) for another 10 minutes, and it’s done!!

Flourless Peanut Butter CookiesI bought two big jars of peanut butter from Costco back in December, and I figured that I should use it. After all, one can only eat so much PB&J. I searched for peanut butter recipes and came across this. I read the reviews, and after all the suggestions that were given. I decided to add 1 tsp vanilla extract to the recipe. I haven’t eaten any yet, but I will give an update once I try one. In the mean time, here are some pictures.